In a pretty conservation village, ‘helpful’, ‘hospitable’ hosts Julie and Paul Evans run their relaxed small hotel with ‘enthusiasm and professionalism’.

‘A nice welcome’ and ‘an excellent dinner’ await at this ‘very pleasant place’, a stone-built former priests’ house by the River Brit, deep in Thomas Hardy’s Wessex.

Parents ‘sleep like babies’ at this ‘fantastic’ family-friendly hotel, a Jacobean manor house in ‘glorious’ countryside.

‘With a tradition of service that’s second to none, this is without doubt one of the finest country house hotels – if not the finest – in England,’ raves a regular Guide reader this year.

Plush, lush and ‘convivial’, this luxury hotel on the edge of the ‘stunning’, rural Ribble valley is ‘an old favourite of local residents’.

With ancient foundations, this black-and-white-timbered Tudor pile, on the high street of a medieval town, has been run as an inn since at least 1564.

An ‘easy informality’ fills this ‘fun’ hotel, in an ‘unspoilt’ Cotswold village in the green Slad valley. The newest in the Calcot Hotels group, it enters the Guide thanks to inspectors who found it ‘a happy place, with attentive staff’.

There are, ‘quite literally’, fairies at the bottom of the garden at Teresa and Kevin O’Sullivan’s ‘friendly’ cliff-top hotel, on a ‘remote’ country road ‘with spectacular views of the sea’.

White-glove service may be the norm at any luxury hotel, but even the youngest guests receive white-mitten treatment at this exceptionally family-friendly spot.

There are ‘superb’ rooms, ‘attentive’ staff and ‘cream-tea scones just as they should be’ at this ‘comfortable’, well-loved country hotel above the Forest of Bowland.

Pheasants scatter on the lawn around this Italianate mansion standing ‘proudly’ by the River Usk, where Guide inspectors in 2016 found ‘a fine house filled with warm, amiable staff’.

‘Everything is exquisite’ at this ‘very welcoming’ country house retreat (Relais & Châteaux), where goldfinches, song thrushes and blackbirds flit about the ‘beautiful’ grounds leading to a vast bird reserve.

Meadows, mountains and Michelin-starred meals attract visitors to Susan and Bryan Webb’s ‘lovely’, rural restaurant-with-rooms, in a mellow-stone Georgian gentry house.

The name may mean ‘house among thistles’, but the ‘meticulously kept’ combination of manicured lawns, knotted gardens and meadow flowers tells otherwise.

On this ‘very special’ island off the Isle of Mull, ‘charming’ owners Wendy and Rob MacManaway create a homely, relaxing atmosphere at their ‘informal’ 19th-century former crofter’s cottage, its lawns tumbling down to the rocky shoreline.

‘Hurray! This is how a good hotel should be,’ crow Guide inspectors in 2016. ‘You immediately feel, as you walk in the door, that they’re keen to make you feel at home.’

The surroundings are vast: well-kept lawns lead to thick woodland; there are waterfalls, a tumbling burn, an old Victorian trout pond and a private beach. Inside this pretty Victorian hunting lodge, however, things shrink down to a human scale, as hosts Laurence and Katie Mackay create a ‘house- party atmosphere’.

‘Lovely, warm and welcoming, it is one of our favourite places to stay.’ Formed from a collection of whitewashed cottages in a fishing village, Jean Urquhart’s unusual bookshop-with-rooms began in 1970 as a café in a boatshed, where musicians could sing for their supper.

In a ‘remarkable’ setting on the remote west coast of Harris, this ‘peaceful’ whitewashed manse soothes frazzled souls with the ‘wonderfully laid-back, professional’ hospitality within.

‘Very much a town hotel’ (‘at teatime it was full of people taking tea; in the morning, it was heaving with coffee drinkers’), this popular spot attracts many guests who return for the ‘friendly welcome’ and the ‘pleasant, unfussy’ service.

‘The warmth of the welcome, the good food, the atmosphere and the unspoilt environs are hard to beat,’ writes a regular Guide correspondent in 2016, of the Wild family’s hotel in a ‘charming’ village near Chichester harbour.

‘High standards are faultlessly maintained’ at Imogen Skirving’s much-loved, somewhat eccentric hotel in the Vale of Belvoir.

In an ‘excellent’ spot overlooking the beach, this post-war fun palace is ‘a winning choice for families with young children’, says a recent guest.

In ‘attractive’ gardens, ‘just as fetching in winter frost as in the spring’, this honey-stoned former rectory welcomes guests into plush luxury (with, some visitors point out, a price tag to match).